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EDGAR ALLAN POE

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Edgar Allan Poe

By
Edmund Clarence Stedman

PRIVATELY PRINTED

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA

1909

Edition limited to 200 copies

COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

Reprinted by courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE TORCH PRESS
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA

FOREWORD

This reprint of the late Edmund Clar
ence Stedman's admirable essay on Edgar
Allan Poe is from a recent impression of
his Poets of America, and is republished in
this form by permission of his publishers,
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company. This
permission was given heartily at the kindly
suggestion of the author himself a few
months before he died. The essay was pub
lished first in Scribners' Monthly for May,

1880. It was issued in small octavo form
that same year by Houghton, Mifflin & Com
pany, though the title page bears the date

1881. The covers of the little volume were
of genuine vellum, and the book was the
first one so brought out in America. The
format was in imitation of a series started
in London by Kegan Paul with The Vicar
of Wakefield at the suggestion of Mr. Sted-
man. The essay was revised and extended

388066

6 FOREWORD

by the author in 1886 and made the Poe
chapter in his book of criticism, Poets of
America.

It is felt no apology is needed for this
reprint of that appreciative essay. It is
a model of its kind, and is fitly representa
tive of the genial, sympathetic nature of
its author. Mr. Stedman was a friendly
man. In his critical work he aimed to
build, not to destroy. Lovers of that er
ratic genius, Edgar Allan Poe, feel grate
ful to our author for the kindly and the
sympathetic touch every portion of the es
say evidences.

A few brief words as to Mr. Stedman
are not inappropriate here. He was born
in Hartford, Connecticut, October 8, 1833.
When still a child he lost his father, and
his mother soon afterwards married and
went to Italy to live. The future poet and
critic was placed in charge of an uncle in
Norwich, where he lived from the age of
five to sixteen, and where he fitted himself
for college. He entered Yale in 1849 as

FOREWORD 7

a member of the class of 1853. He did not
complete the course, a student prank hav
ing brought his college career to an abrupt
close. Long years afterwards his alma
mater repented of her previous action and
made up for the degree then withheld by
bestowing upon him her highest academic
distinctions.

For the next four years he was a country
journalist. He then joined the staff of the
New York Tribune, and did some maga
zine work. During the Civil War he
served for two years as special corres
pondent of the New York World. He next
studied law, and in 1864 became connected
with the work of the Union Pacific Rail
road. In 1869 he became a member of
the New York Stock Exchange, and for
more than thirty years his activities were
devoted to banking. Throughout all these
busy years he kept up his literary activities,
doing editorial, critical, and original work.
With Professor Woodberry he edited an
edition of Poe, and in collaboration with

8 FOREWORD

Miss Hutchison the Library of American
Literature. His most serious work was in
the field of criticism. His Victorian Poets,
Poets of America, Victorian Anthology,
American Anthology, and Nature and Ele
ments of Poetry are performances that can
not be bettered. As a poet Mr. Stedman
takes high rank.

A sudden failure of the heart on Jan
uary 18, 1908, and

' ' Dead he lay among his books. ' '

LUTHER A. BREWER

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

July 1, 1909

EDGAR ALLAN POE

EDGAR ALLAN POE
I

UPON the roll of American authors a
few names are written apart from
the many. With each of these is associated
some accident of condition, some memory
of original or eccentric genius, through
which it arrests attention and claims our
special wonder. The light of none among
these few has been more fervid and recur
rent than that of Edgar Allan Poe. But,
as I in turn pronounce his name, and in
my turn would estimate the man and his
writings, I am at once confronted by the
question, Is this poet, as now remembered,
as now portrayed to us, the real Poe who
lived and sang and suffered, and who died
but little more than a quarter-century ago ?
The great heart of the world throbs
warmly over the struggles of our kind : the The witch-

ery of

imagination of the world dwells upon and Time.

12 EDGAR ALLAN POH

enlarges the glory and the shame of human
action in the past. Year after year, the
heart-beats are more warm, the conception
grows more distinct with light and shade.
The person that was is made the frame
work of an image to which the tender, the
romantic, the thoughtful, the simple, and
the wise add each his own folly or wisdom,
his own joy and sorrow and uttermost
yearning. Thus, not only true heroes and
poets, but many who have been conspicuous
through force of circumstances, become
idealized as time goes by. The critic 's first
labor often is the task of distinguishing
between men, as history and their wo^ks
display them, and the ideals which one and
another have conspired to urge upon his
acceptance.

The difficulty is increased when, as in the

CaSe °f P06' a tw°fold ideal 6xists> °f wh°Se

opposite sides many that have written upon
him seem to observe but one. In the opin
ion of some people, even now, his life was
not only pitiful, but odious, and his writ-

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 13

ings are false and insincere. They speak
of his morbid genius, his unjust criticisms,
his weakness and ingratitude, and scarcely
can endure the mention of his name. Oth
ers recount his history as that of a sensitive,
gifted being, most sorely beset and envi
roned, who was tried beyond his strength
and prematurely yielded, but still uttered
not a few undying strains. As a new gen
eration has arisen, and those of his own
who knew him are passing away, the latter
class of his reviewers seems to outnumber
the former. A chorus of indiscriminate
praise has grown so loud as really to be
an ill omen for his fame ; yet, on the whole,
the wisest modern estimate of his char
acter and writings has not lessened the
interest long ago felt in them at home and
abroad.

It seems to me that two things at least
are certain. First, and although his life Postulates.
has been the subject of the research which
is awarded only to strange and suggestive
careers, he was, after all, a man of like

14 EDGAR ALLAN POE

passions with ourselves, — one who, if
weaker in his weaknesses than many, and
stronger in his strength, may not have been
so bad, nor yet so good, as one and another
have painted him. Thousands have gone
as far toward both extremes, and the world
never has heard of them. Only the gift of
genius has made the temperament of Poe
a common theme. And thus, I also think,
we are sure, in once more calling up his
shade, that we invoke the manes of a poet.
Of his right to this much-abused title there
can be little dispute, nor of the claim
that, whatever he lacked in compass, ho
unique was unique among his fellows, — so differ-
/*•«*«*- ent from any other writer that America
has produced as really to stand alone. He
must have had genius to furnish even the
basis for an ideal which excites this per
sistent interest. Yes, we are on firm ground
with relation to his genuineness as a poet.
But his narrowness of range, and the
slender body of his poetic remains, of
themselves should make writers hesitate to

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 15

pronounce him our greatest one. His
verse is as conspicuous for what it shows
he could not do as for that which he did.
He is another of those poets, outside the
New England school, of whom each has
made his mark in a separate way, — among
them all, none more decisively than Poe.
So far as the judgment of a few rare spirits
in foreign lands may be counted the verdict
of "posterity," an estimate of him is not
to be lightly and flippantly made. Nor is
it long since a group of his contemporaries
and successors, in his own country, spoke of
him as a poet whose works are a lasting
monument, and of his "imperishable"
fame.

After every allowance, it seems difficult
for one not utterly jaded to read his poetry
and tales without yielding to their original
and haunting spell. Even as we drive out
of mind the popular conceptions of his Personal

aspect.

nature, and look only at the portraits of
him in the flesh, we needs must pause and
contemplate, thoughtfully and with re-

16 EDGAR ALLAN POH

newed feeling, one of the marked ideal
faces that seem — like those of Byron, De
Musset, Heine — to fulfil all the traditions
of genius, of picturesqueness, of literary
and romantic effect.

Hatpin's Halpin's engraving of Poe, in which the
poe^int'he draughtsman was no servile copyist, but
compete strove to express the sitter at his best,

American

edition. makes it possible to recall the poet delin
eated by those who knew and admired him
in his nobler seasons. "We see one they
describe as slight but erect of figure,
athletic and well molded, of middle
height, but so proportioned as to seem
every inch a man ; his head finely modeled,
with a forehead and temples large and not
unlike those of Bonaparte; his hands fair
as a woman 's, — in all, a graceful, well-
dressed gentleman, — one, even in the garb
of poverty, "with gentleman written all
over him." We see the handsome, intel
lectual face, the dark and clustering hair,
the clear and sad gray-violet eyes, — large,
lustrous, glowing with expression, — the

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 17

mouth, whose smile at least was sweet and
winning. We imagine the soft, musical
voice (a delicate thing in man or woman),
the easy, quiet movement, the bearing that
no failure could humble. And this man
had not only the gift of beauty, but the
passionate love of beauty, — either of which
may be as great a blessing or peril as can
befall a human being stretched upon the
rack of this tough world.

But look at some daguerreotype taken Later

Portraits.

shortly before his death, and it is like an
inauspicious mirror, that shows all too
clearly the ravage made by a vexed spirit
within, and loses the qualities which only
a living artist could feel and capture.
Here is the dramatic, defiant bearing, but
with it the bitterness of scorn. The dis
dain of an habitual sneer has found an
abode on the mouth, yet scarcely can hide
the tremor of irresolution. In Bendann's Rei>ro~

duced

likeness, indubitably faithful, we find those «» '*«

" Memo-

hardened lines of the chin and neck that rial voi-
are often visible in men who have gambled Bait., 1377.

18 EDGAR ALLAN POH

heavily, which Poe did not in his mature
years, or who have lived loosely and slept
ill. The face tells of battling, of conquer
ing external enemies, of many a defeat
when the man was at war with his meaner
self.

Among the pen-portraits of Poe, at his
best and his worst, none seem more strik
ing in their juxtaposition, none less affect
ed by friendship or hatred, than those left
Reprinted to us by C. F. Briggs, the poet's early

in tfie New

York "in- associate. These were made but a short
time before the writer's death, — after the
laPse of years had softened the prejudices
of a man prejudiced indeed, yet of a kindly
heart, and had rendered the critical habit
of the journalist almost a rule of action.

If these external aspects were the signs
of character within, we can understand
why those who saw them should have be
lieved of Poe — and in a different sense
than of Hawthorne — that

"Two natures in him strove
Like day with night, his sunshine and his gloom."

EDGAR ALLAN POB 19

The recorded facts of his life serve to
enhance this feeling. My object here is
not biography, yet let us note the brief
annals of a wayward, time-tossed critic, ^
romancer, poet. Their purport and out
line, seen through a cloud of obscurities,
and the veil thrown over them by his own
love of mystery and retreat, — made out
from the various narratives of those who
have contended in zeal to discover the
minute affairs of this uncommon man, — the
substance of them all, I say, may readily
enough be told.

II

The law of chance, that has so much to
do with the composition of a man, that
makes no two alike, yet adjusts the most
of us to a common average, brings about
exceptional unions like the one from which
the poet sprang. A well-born, dissolute
Maryland boy, with a passion for the stage,
marries an actress and adopts her profes
sion, — taking up a life that was strolling,
precarious, half-despised in the pioneer

20 EDGAR ALLAN POE

times. Three children were the fruit of
EdearAi- this love-match. The second, Edgar, was

Ian Poe:

bom in born in Boston, January 19, 1809. From
January his father he inherited Italian, French, and
19,1809. irjgh blood; the Celtic pride of disposition
and certain weaknesses that were his bane.
His mother, Elizabeth Arnold, an actress
of some talent, was as purely English as
her name. Two years after his birth, the
hapless parents, wearied and destitute,
died at Richmond, both in the same week.
The orphans "found kind friends, " and
were adopted — the oldest, William, by his
grandfather Poe, of Baltimore; Edgar and
Kosalie by citizens of Richmond. Edgar
His chad- gained a protector in Mr. Allan, an Eng
lish-born and wealthy merchant, who was
married, but without a child. The boy's
beauty and precocity won the heart of this
gentleman, who gave him his name, and
lavished upon him, in true southern style,
all that perilous endearment which befits
the son and heir of a generous house. Ser
vants, horses, dogs, the finest clothes, a

EDGAR ALLAN POH 21

purse well filled, all these were at his dis
posal from the outset. Great pains were
taken with his education, the one element
of moral discipline seemingly excepted.
When eight years old he went with Mr.
Allan to England, and was at the school
in Stoke-Newington, to which it is thought
his memory went back in after years, when
he wrote the tale of ''William Wilson." Training.
At ten we find him at school in Richmond,
proficient in classical studies but shirking
his mathematics, already writing verse, —
instinctively

11 Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom he learned to love
Before he knew 't was Art."

His grace and strength, his free, romantic,
and ardent bearing, made him friends
among old and young, and at this time he
certainly was capable of the most passion
ate loyalty to those he loved. Traditions
of all this — of his dreamy, fitful tempera
ment, of his early sorrows and his mid
night mournings over the grave of an af-

22 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

fectionate woman who had been his para
gon — are carefully preserved. He was a
schoolboy, here and there, until 1826, when

college he passed a winter at the University of
Virginia. He ended his brief course in
the school of ancient and modern languages
with a successful examination, but after
much dissipation and gambling which
deeply involved him in debt. His thought
lessness and practical ingratitude justly
incensed an unwise but hitherto devoted
guardian. A rupture followed between the
two, Mr. Allan finally refusing to counte
nance Edgar's extravagances; and the

"Tamer- young man betook himself to Boston,
" where, after a few months, he succeeded in
finding a printer for his first little book,

1827. Re- a revised collection of juvenile poems. But

printed,

with he was soon reduced to straits, and driven

changes

andomts- to enlistment, under a partly fictitious

sions,

Baltimore, name, as a soldier; in which capacity, first
a private and then by promotion a ser-

Enlistment

in the geant-major, he served his country for
almost two years. In 1829 he was touched

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 23

by the news of the death of Mrs. Allan,
who had always given him a sympathetic
mother's love. He obtained a furlough,
and effected a reconciliation with the wid
ower in his hour of loneliness and sorrow. "Edsar

Allan

Poe's later and trustworthy biographer has /*>*." sy
spared no pains to give the true details

of the youth's enlistment, service, and
final discharge through the influence of his 1885>
early protector.

About this time he visited his aunt, Mrs.
Maria Clemm, of Baltimore. Her daugh
ter Virginia was then six years old, and
Poe interested himself in the sweet and
gentle child, who loved him from the first,
and made his will her law through girlhood
and their subsequent wedded life.

Poe now was asked to choose a profes
sion ; he selected that of arms, and his ben
efactor secured his admission to West west
Point. Here we find him in 1830, and find
little good of him. Though now a man
grown, he was unable to endure discipline.
After a first success, he tired of the place

24 EDGAR ALLAN POH

and brought about his own expulsion and
disgrace, to his patron's deep, and this
time lasting, resentment. But here he also
arranged for the issue, by subscription, of

tion edition .

of his another edition of his poems, which was
*N™: delivered to his classmates after his depart-

1831*' lire ^rom the acac*emy-

A new personage now comes upon the
scene. Mr. Allan, naturally desiring affec
tion from some quarter, married again, and
after a time heirs were born to the estate
which Poe, had he been less reckless, might
have inherited. The poet, returning in dis
grace to Eichmond, found no intercessor
in the home of his youth. This change, and
his manner of life thus far, render it need
less to look for other causes of the final
rupture between himself and his guardian.
It was the just avenge of fate for his per
sistent folly, and a defeat was inevitable in
his contest (if there was a contest) with a
lady who, by every law of right, was
Adrift. stronger than he. Poe went out into the
world with full permission to have the

EDGAR ALLAN POH 25

one treasure he had seemed to value — his
own way. Like a multitude of American
youths, often the sons or grandsons of
successful men, he found himself of age,
without the means proportionate to the
education, habits, and needs of a gentleman,
and literally, in the place of an unfailing
income, without a cent. Better off than
many who have erred less, he had one
strong ally — his pen. With this he was His one

ally.

henceforth to earn his own bed and board,
and lead the arduous life of a working man
of letters.

For the struggle now begun his resources
of tact, good sense, self-poise, were as de
ficient as his intellectual equipment was
great. Soon after the loss of a home-right,
which he forfeited more recklessly than
Esau, his professional career may be said
to have begun. It extended, with brief but
frequent intermissions, from 1832 to 1849,
the year of his untimely death. Its first
noteworthy event was the celebrated intro-

start.

duction to Kennedy, Latrobe, and Miller,

26

Summary
of his
career.

See Chap.
XI, and
cf. " Vic
torian
Poets":
pp. 81, 82.

Head and
heart.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB

through his success in winning a literary
prize with "A MS. Found in a Bottle."
This brought him friends, work, and local
reputation, — in all, a fair and well-earned
start.

Seventeen years, thenceforward, of work
ing life, in which no other American writer
was more active and prominent. I have
considered elsewhere the influence of jour
nalism upon authorship. It enabled Poe
to live. On the other hand, while he rarely
made his lighter work commonplace, it lim
ited the importance of his highest efforts,
gave a paragraphic air to his criticisms, and
left some of his most suggestive writings
mere fragments of what they should be.
He discovered the pretentious mediocrity
of a host of scribblers, and when unbiased
by personal feeling, and especially when
doing imaginative work, was one of the few
clear-headed writers of his day. He knew
what he desired to produce, and how to
produce it. We say of a man that his
head may be wrong, but his heart is all

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 27

right. There were times enough when the
reverse of this was true of Poe. I do not
say there were not other times when his
heart was as sound as his perceptions.
What, after all, is the record of his years
of work, and what is the significance of that
record? We must consider the man in his
environment, and the transient, uncertain
character of the markets to which he
brought his wares. His labors, then, were
continually impeded, broken, changed ; first,
by the most trying and uncontrollable na
ture that ever poet possessed, that ever pos
sessed a poet; by an unquiet, capricious
temper, a childish enslavement to his own
"Imp of the Perverse, " a scornful petti- "The imp

ofthePer-

ness that made him "hard to help," that verse."
drove him to quarrel with his patient, gen
erous friends, and to wage ignoble conflict
with enemies of his own making ; by physi
cal and moral lapses, partly the result of
inherited taint, in which he resorted, more
or less frequently, and usually at critical
moments, — seasons when he needed all his

28

Precari
ous life of
A merican

Marriage
with Vir
ginia
Clemm,

1835.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

resources, all his courage and manhood, —
to stimulants which he knew would madden
and besot him more than other men. None
the less his genius was apparent, his power
felt, his labor in demand wherever the
means existed to pay for it. But here,
again, his life was made precarious and
shifting by the speculative, ill-requited
nature of literary enterprises at that time.
From various causes, therefore, his record —
no matter how it is attacked or defended —
is one of irregularity, of broken and re
newed engagements. From 1832 to 1835
Poe had but himself to support, and a care
less young fellow always gets on so long
as he is young, with one success and the
chance of a future. The next year his pri
vate marriage to his sweet cousin Virginia,
still almost a child, was reaffirmed in pub
lic, and the two set up their home together.
The time had come when Poe, with his
sense of the fitness of things, could see
that Bohemianism, the charm of youth, is
a frame that poorly suits the portrait of

HDGAR ALLAN POE 29

a mature and able-handed man. So we are
not surprised to find him engaged, for hon
est wages, upon ' ( The Southern Literary joumai-
Messenger." That his skilful touch and
fantastic genius, whether devoted to real
istic or psychological invention, were now
at full command, is shown by his "Hans
Pfaall," and by his first striking contribu
tion to the "Messenger," the spectral and
characteristic tale of "Berenice." In
short, he did uncommon work, for that time,
upon the famous Southern magazine, both
as tale-writer and as critic, and increased
its reputation and income. Yet he felt, Mental
with all the morbid sensitiveness of one
spoilt by luxury and arrogance in youth,
the difference between his present work-a-
day life and the independence, the social
standing, which if again at his command
would enable him to indulge his finer
tastes and finish at ease the work best
suited to his powers. From this time he
was subject to moods of brooding and de
spair, of crying out upon fate, that were

30 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

his pest and his ultimate destruction. And
so we again are not surprised to find this
good beginning no true omen of the fifteen
years to come; and that these years are
counted by Sittings here and there be-
tween points that offered employment; by
new engagements taken up before he was
off with the old; by legends of his bearing
and entanglements in the social world he
entered; by alternate successes and dis
graces, in Richmond, Philadelphia, Boston,
New York ; by friendships and fallings out
with many of the editors who employed
him, — the product, after all, with which we
are chiefly concerned being his always dis
tinctive writings for the "Quarterly,"
"The Gentleman's Magazine," "Gra
ham's," "Godey's," "The Mirror," "The
American Review," and various other fos
terers and distributers of such literature
as the current taste might demand. We be
gin to understand his spasmodic, versatile
industry, his balks and breaks, his frequent

tunes.

poverty, despondency, self-abandonment,

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 31

and almost to wonder that the sensitive fem
inine spirit — worshiping beauty and ab
horrent of ugliness and pain, combating
with pride, with inherited disease of appe
tite — did not sooner yield, was not utterly
overcome almost at the outset of these expe
riences. So have I wondered at seeing a
delicate forest-bird, leagues from the shore,
keep itself on the wing above relentless
waters into which it was sure to fall at last.1
Poe had his good genius and his bad. Near
the close of the struggle he made a brave
effort, and never was so earnest and re
solved, so much his own master, as just
before the end. But a man is no stronger •?'?/?' *n

Baltimore,

than his weakest part, and with the snap-

* '

1849.

1 Finely paraphrased, since the original ap
pearance of this chapter, by my friend, Mr. Win
ter:

"Far from the blooming field and fragrant wood
The shining songster of the summer sky,

O'er ocean's black and frightful solitude,
Driven on broken wing, must sink and die";

Poem read at the Dedication of the
Actor's Monument to Poe, May 4, 1885.

V

32 EDGAR ALLAN POH

ping of that his chance is over. At the
moment when the poet, rallying from the
desolation caused by the loss of his wife,
found new hope and purpose, and was on
his way to marry a woman who possibly
might have saved him, the tragedy of his
life began again. Its final scene was as
swift, irreparable, black with terror, as that
of any drama ever written. His death was
gloom. Men saw him no more; but the
shadow of a veiled old woman, mourning
Maria for him, hovered here and there. After
many years a laurelled tomb was placed
above his ashes, and there remain to Amer
ican literature the relics, so unequal in
• value, of the most isolated and exceptional
of all its poets and pioneers.

Poe's misfortunes were less than those
of some who have conquered misfortune.
Others have been castaways in infancy and
friendless in manhood, and have found no
protectors such as came at his need. Still
others have struggled and suffered, and
have declined to wear their hearts upon

EDGAR ALLAN POE 33

their sleeves. They have sought consola
tion in their work, and from their bitter
experiences have gathered strength and
glory. The essential part of an artist's life ^
is that of his inspired moments. There
were occasions when Poe was the master,
when his criticism was true, when he com
posed such tales as ' ' Ligeia, " " The Fall of
the House of Usher," poems like "The
Raven," "The Bells," "The City in the
Sea." It must be acknowledged, moreover
— and professional writers know what this
implies — that Poe, in his wanderings, after
all, followed his market. It gradually rheiiter-
drif ted to the North, until New York afford- ^ mar'
ed the surest recompense to authors not
snugly housed in the leafy coverts of New
England. Nor did he ever resort to any
mercantile employment for a livelihood. As
we look around and see how authors accept
this or that method of support, there seems
to be something chivalrous in the attitude
of one who never earned a dollar except
by his pen. From first to last he was simply

34 EDGAR ALLAN POH

A genuine a p0et and man of letters, who rightly

man of

letters. might claim to be judged by the literary
product of his life. The life itself differed
from that of any modern poet of equal
genius, and partly because none other has
found himself, in a new country, among
such elements. Too much has been written
about the man, too little of his times.

interest His story has had a fascination for those

excited by

poe's life who consider the infirmity of genius its nat
ural outward sign. The peculiarity of his
actions was their leaning toward what is
called the melodramatic; of his work, that
it aimed above the level of its time. What
has been written of the former — of little
value as compared with the analysis deriv
able from his literary remains — was for a
long time the output of those who, if unable
to produce a stanza which he would have
acknowledged, at least felt within them
selves the possibilities of his errant career.
Yet, as I observe the marvels of his handi
craft, I seem unjust to these enthusiasts.
It was the kind .which most impresses the

EDGAR ALLAN POH 35

imagination of youth, and youth is a pe
riod at which the critical development of
many biographers seems to be arrested.
And who would not recall the zest with
which he read, in school-boy days, and by
the stolen candle, a legend so fearful in
its beauty and so beautiful in its fear as
"The Masque of the Red Death," for ex
ample, found in some stray number of a
magazine, and making the printed trash
that convoyed it seem so vapid and drear?
Not long after, we had the collected series,
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. " Tales of
With what eagerness we caught them from
hand to hand until many of us knew them
almost by heart. In the East, at that time, 184°-
Hawthorne was shyly putting out his
"Mosses" and "Twice Told Tales," and it
was not an unfruitful period that fostered,
among its brood of chattering and aimless
sentimentalists, two such spirits at once,
each original in his kind. To-day we have
a more consummate, realistic art. But
where, now, the creative ardor, the power

36

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Poetry a
passion
with him.

Lyrical
remains.

to touch the stops, if need be, of tragedy
and superstition and remorse ! Our taste is
more refined, our faculties are under con
trol ; to produce the greatest art they must,
at times, compel the artist. " Poetry," said
Poe, "has been with me a passion, not a
purpose," — a remarkable sentence to be
found in a boyish preface, and I believe that
he wrote the truth. But here, again, he
displays an opposite failing. If poetry
had been with him no less a passion, and
equally a purpose, we now should have had
something more to represent his rhythmical
genius than the few brief, occasional lyrics
which are all that his thirty years of life
as a poet — the life of his early choice — have
left to us.

Ill

In estimating him as a poet, the dates of
these lyrics are of minor consequence. They
make but a thin volume, smaller than one
which might hold the verse of Collins or
Gray. Their range is narrower still. It
is a curious fact that Poe struck, in youth,

EDGAR ALLAN POH 37

the keynotes of a few themes, and that some--
of his best pieces, as we now have them,
are but variations upon their earlier treat
ment.

His first collection was made in his Early

. books of

eighteenth year, revised m his twentieth, verse:
and again reprinted, with changes and £jj£j^
omissions, just after he left West Point. The ly> in 1827)
form of the longer poems is copied from 1831-
Byron and Moore, while the spirit of the
whole series vaguely reminds us of Shelley
in his obscurer lyrical mood. Poe's origin
ality can be found in them, but they would
be valueless except for his after career.
They have unusual significance as the
shapeless germs of much that was to grow Germs of
into form and beauty. Crude and wan-
dering pieces, entitled "Fairy Land" and
"Irene," "To - - " "A Pa>an," etc.,
were the originals of "The Sleeper," "A
Dream within a Dream," and "Lenore";
while "The Doomed City" and "The Val
ley Nis" reappear as "The City in the
Sea " and " The Valley of Unrest. ' ' Others

38 EDGAR ALLAN POH

were less thoroughly rewritten. Possibly
he thus remodeled his juvenile verse to
show that, however inchoate, it contained
something worth a master's handling. Mr.
Stoddard thinks, and not without reason,
that he found it an easy way of making
salable "copy." The poet himself inti
mates that circumstances beyond his con
trol restricted his lyrical product. I
scarcely remember another instance where
a writer has so hoarded his early songs,
and am in doubt whether to commend or
deprecate their reproduction. It does not
betoken affluence, but it was honest in Poe
that he would not write in cold blood for
the mere sake of composing. This he un
doubtedly had the skill to do, and would
have done, if his sole object had been cre-
His use of ation of the beautiful, or art for art 's sake.
He used his lyrical gift mostly to express
veritable feelings and moods — I might
almost say a single feeling or mood — to
which he could not otherwise give utter
ance, resorting to melody when prose was

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 39

insufficient. Herein he was true to the
cardinal, antique conception of poesy, and
in keeping it distinct from his main liter
ary work he confirmed his own avowal that
it was to him a passion, and neither a pur
pose nor a pursuit.

A few poems, just as they stood in his
early volumes, are admirable in thought or
finish. One is the sonnet, "To Science," Precocity.
which is striking, not as a sonnet, but for
its premonition of attitudes which poetry
and science have now more clearly assumed.
Another is the exquisite lyric, "To Helen,"
which every critic longs to cite. Its con
fusion of imagery is wholly forgotten in the
delight afforded by melody, lyrical perfec
tion, sweet and classic grace. I do not un
derstand why he omitted this charming
trifle from the juvenile poems which he
added to the collection of 1845. Although
it first appeared in his edition of 1831, he
claimed to have written it when fourteen,
and nothing more fresh and delicate came
from his pen in maturer years.

40 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

The instant success of "The Raven"—
and this was within a few years of his
death — first made him popular as a poet,
and resulted in a new collection of his
verses. The lyrics which it contained, and
t>The a few written afterward, — "Ulalume,"

Raven and

other "The Bells," "For Annie," etc.,— now

Poems," . , . n _ , .

1845. comprise the whole of his poetry as re

tained in the standard editions. The most
glaring faults of "Al Aaraaf " and "Tam
erlane" have been selected by eulogists for
special praise. Turning from this practice-
work to the poems which made his reputa
tion, we come at once to the most widely
known of all.

" The Poe could not have written ' ' The Raven ' '

in youth. It exhibits a method so positive
as almost to compel us to accept, against
the denial of his associates, his own account
of its building. The maker does keep a
firm hand on it throughout, and for once
seems to set his purpose above his passion.
This appears in the gravely quaint diction,
and in the contrast between the reality of

EDGAR ALLAN POH 41

every-day manners and the profounder
reality of a spiritual shadow upon the hu
man heart. The grimness of fate is sug
gested by phrases which it requires a mas
terly hand to subdue to the meaning of
the poem. " 'Sir,' said I, 'or madam,' "
"this ungainly fowl," and the like, sustain
the air of grotesqueness, and become a foil
to the pathos, an approach to the tragical
climax, of this unique production. Only
genius can deal so closely with the gro
tesque, and make it add to the solemn
beauty of structure an effect like that of
the gargoyles seen by moonlight on the
facade of Notre Dame.

In no other lyric is Poe so self-possessed. Not his
No other is so determinate in its repetends
and alliterations. Hence I am far from
deeming it his most poetical poem. Its arti
ficial qualities are those which catch the
fancy of the general reader; and it is of
all his ballads, if not the most imaginative,
the most peculiar. His more ethereal pro
ductions seem to me those in which there

42 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

is the appearance, at least, of spontaneity,
—in which he yields to his feelings, while
dying falls and cadences most musical, most
melancholy, come from him unawares. Lit
eral criticisms of ' i The Raven ' ' are of small
account. If the shadow of the bird could
not fall upon the mourner, the shadows of
its evil presence could brood upon his soul ;
the seraphim whose footfalls tinkle upon
the tufted floor may be regarded as sera
phim of the Orient, their anklets hung with
celestial bells. At all events, Poe's raven
is the very genius of the Night's Plutonian
shore, different from other ravens, entirely
his own, and none other can take its place.
It is an emblem of the Irreparable, the
guardian of pitiless memories, whose bur
den ever recalls to us the days that are no
more.

As a new creation, then, "The Raven"

is entitled to a place in literature, and keeps

it. But how much more imaginative is

"The aty such s, poem as "The City in the Sea!"

sea." As a picture, this reminds us of Turner,

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 43

and, again, of that sublime madman, John
Martin. Here is a strange city where
Death has raised a throne. Its

' ' shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Eesemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Besignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie. "

This mystical town is aglow with light, not
from heaven, but from out the lurid sea, —
light which streams up the turrets and pin
nacles and domes, — •

' ' Up many and many a marvelous shrine,
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

While, from a proud tower in the town,
Death looks gigantically down."

The sea about is hideously serene, but at
last there is a movement; the towers seem
slightly to sink; the dull tide has a redder
glow, —

"And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,

44 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence."

This poem, notwithstanding its sombreness
and terror, depends upon effects which
made Poe the forerunner of our chief ex
perts in form and sound, and both the
language and the conception are suggestive
in a high degree.

"The "The Sleeper" is even more poetic. It

distills, like drops from the opiate vapor
of the swooning moonlit night, all the mel
ody, the fantasy, the exaltation, that befit
the vision of a beautiful woman lying in
her shroud, silent in her length of tress,
waiting to exchange her death chamber

"for one more holy,
This bed, for one more melancholy."

Poe's ideality cannot be gainsaid, but it
aided him with few, very few, images, and
those seemed to haunt his brain perpetual
ly. Such an image is that of the beings
who lend their menace to the tone of the
funeral bells : —

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 45

' ' And the people, — ah, the people, —
They that dwell up in the steeple

All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone, —
They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither brute nor human,
They are Ghouls."

In the same remarkable fantasia the bells •• The
themselves become human, and it is a mas- Bells"
ter-stroke that makes us hear them shriek
out of tune,

"In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the
fire,"

and forces us to the very madness with
which they are

"Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor

Now — now to sit, or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon. ' '

Clearly this extravagance was suggested by
the picture and the rhyme. But it so car-

46 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

ries us with it that we think not of its
meaning; we share in the delirium of the
bells, and nothing can be too extreme for
the abandon to which we yield ourselves,
led by the faith and frenzy of the poet.

The hinting, intermittent qualities of a

y few lyrics remind us of Shelley and Cole

ridge, with whom Poe always was in sym

pathy. The conception of "The Raven"

was new, but in method it bears a likeness

use of the to "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," so close-

refrain ^ • '

andrepe- ly, in fact, that the rhythm of the one
Mrs. probably was suggested by that of the other.

In motive they are so different that neither
Poe. ct. poe nor jyjj.g Browning could feel ag-

Victorv

an Poets": grieved. After an examination of dates,

P. 145.

and of other matters relating to the gene
sis of each poem, I have satisfied myself,
against much reasoning to the contrary,
that Poe derived his use of the refrain and
repetend, here and elsewhere, from tha
English sibyl, by whom they were employed
to the verge of mannerism in her earliest
lyrics.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 47

"The Conqueror Worm" expresses in a " <The Con-

queror

single moan the hopelessness of the poet's
vigils among the tombs, where he demand
ed of silence and the night some tidings of
the dead. All he knew was that

"No voice from that sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given. ' ;

The most he dared to ask for "The Sleep
er" was oblivion; that her sleep might be
as deep as it was lasting. We lay the dead
"in the cold ground" or in the warm,
flower-springing bosom of dear Earth, as
best may fit the hearts of those who mourn
them. But the tomb, the end of mortality,
is voiceless still. If you would find the
beginning of immortality, seek some other
oracle. "The Conqueror Worm" is the
most despairing of lyrics, yet quite essential
to the mystical purpose of the tale
"Ligeia." But to brood upon men as
mimes, ironically cast "in the form of God
on high," — mere puppets, where

"the play is the tragedy, 'Man/
And its hero the Conqueror Worm,"

48 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

— that way madness lies, indeed. In the
lyric, "For Annie," death is a trance; the
soul lingers, calm and at rest, for the fever,
called living, is conquered. Human love
remains, and its last kiss is still a balm.
Something may be hereafter, — but what,
who knows? For repose, and for delicate
and unstudied melody, it is one of Poe'a
truest poems, and his tenderest. During
the brief period in which he survived his
wife, he seemed to have a vision of rest in
Requiems, death, and not of horror. Two lyrics,
widely different, and one of them of a most
singular nature, are thought to be requiems
for his lost companion. It is from no base
ness, but from a divine instinct, that gen
uine artists are compelled to go on with
their work and to make their own misery,
no less than their joy, promote its uses.
Their most sacred experiences become, not
of their volition, its themes and illustra
tions. Every man as an individual is sec
ondary to what he is as a worker for the

Arfs
strong
compul
sion.

UDGAR ALLAN FOB 49

progress of his kind and the glory of the
gift allotted to him.

Therefore, whether Poe adored his wife
or not, her image became the ideal of these
poems. I shall add little here to all that
has been written of "Ulalume." It is so " uia-
strange, so unlike anything that preceded
it, so vague and yet so full of meaning, that
of itself it might establish a new method. **
To me it seems an improvisation, such as
a violinist might play upon the instrument
which had become his one thing of worth
after the death of a companion had left
him alone with his own soul. Poe remod
eled and made the most of his first broken
draft, and had the grace not to analyze the
process. I have accepted his analysis of
"The Raven" as more than half true. '
Poets know that an entire poem often is
suggested by one of its lines, even by a
refrain or a bit of rhythm. From this it
builds itself. The last or any other stanza
may be written first; and what at first
is without form is not void, — for ultimately

50 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

it will be perfected into shape and mean
ing. If "Ulalume" may be termed a re-
" Annabel quiem, "Annabel Lee" is a tuneful dirge,

Lee."

the simplest of Poe 's melodies, and the most
likely to please the common ear. It is
said to have been his last lyric, and was
written, I think, with more spontaneity
than others. The theme is carried along
skilfully, the movement hastened and
heightened to the end and there dwelt upon,
as often in a piece of music. Before con-
Poe's sidering the poet's method of song, I will

highest

lyrical mention the two poems which seem to me
to represent his highest range, and suffi
cient in themselves to preserve the memory
of a lyrist.

•• The We overlook the allegory of * ' The Haunt-

^ Palace, " until it has been read more
than once ; we think of the sound, the phan
tasmagoric picture, the beauty, the lurid
close. The magic muse of Coleridge, in
"Kubla Khan," or elsewhere, hardly went
beyond such lines as these : — •

-

EDMTJ

EDGAR ALLAN POH 51

''Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow,
(This — all this — was in the olden

Time long ago;)
And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts, plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away."

The conception of a "Lost Mind" never
has been so imaginatively treated, whether
by poet or by painter. Questioning Poe's
own mental state, look at this poem and
see how sane, as an artist, he was that made
it. "Do you act best when you forget
yourself in the part?" "No, for then I
forget to perfect the part." Even more
striking is the song of "Israfel," whose "
heart-strings are a lute. Of all these lyrics
is not this the most lytrical, — not only
charged with music, but with light? For
once, and in his freest hour of youth, Poe
got above the sepulchres and mists, even
beyond the pale-faced moon, and visited the
empyrean. There is joy in this carol, and

52 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

the radiance of the skies, and ecstatic pos
session of the gift of song : —

"If I could dwell
Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky ! ' '

All this, with the rapturous harmony of the
first and third stanzas, is awakened in the
poet's soul by a line from a discourse on the
Koran, and the result is even finer than the
theme. If I had any claim to make up a
" Parnassus, " not perhaps of the most fa
mous English lyrics, but of those which ap
peal strongly to my own poetic sense, and
could select but one of Poe's, I confess that
I should choose "Israfel," for pure music,
for exaltation, and for its original, satis
fying quality of rhythmic art.

IV

Few and brief are these reliquice which
determine his fame as a poet. What do

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 53

of his lyrical genius and meth-
od? Clearly enough, that he possessed an

they tell us of his lyrical genius and meth- An ex(Jui-

site but lim-

exquisite faculty, which he exercised within
definite bounds. It may be that within
those bounds he would have done more if
events had not hindered him, as he de
clared, "from making any serious effort "
in the field of his choice. In boyhood he
had decided views as to the province of
song, and he never afterward changed
them. The preface to his West Point edi
tion, rambling and conceited as it is, — af
fording such a contrast to the proud humil
ity of Keats 's preface to c ' Endymion, ' ' —
gives us the gist of his creed, and shows
that the instinct of the young poet was
scarcely less delicate than that of his nobler

thought the object of poetry poe's
was pleasure, not truth; the pleasure must
not be definite, but subtile, and therefore
poetry is opposed to romance; music is an
essential, "since the comprehension of
sweet sound is our most indefinite concep
tion. ' ' Metaphysics in verse he hated, pro-

54

Cf. "Vic
torian
Poets":
i>. 127.

"The
Poetic
Principle,'
1845.

The

Rhythmi
cal Crea
tion of
Beauty.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB

nouncing the Lake theory a new form of
didacticism that had injured even the tune
ful Coleridge. For a neophyte this was not
bad, and after certain reservations few will
disagree with him. Eighteen years later, in
his charming lecture, "The Poetic Princi
ple," he offered simply an extension of
these ideas, with reasons why a long poem
"cannot exist." One is tempted to rejoin
that the standard of length in a poem, as in
a piece of music, is relative, depending upon
the power of the maker and the recipient
to prolong their exalted moods. We might,
also, quote Landor's ' * Pentameron, " con
cerning the greatness of a poet, or even
Beecher's saying that "pint measures are
soon filled." The lecture justly denounces
the "heresy of the didactic," and then
declares poetry to be the child of Taste, —
devoted solely to the Rhythmical Creation
of Beauty, as it is in music that the soul
most nearly attains the supernal end for
which it struggles. In fine, Poe, with "the
mad pride of intellectuality," refused to

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 55

look beyond the scope of his own gift, and
would restrict the poet to. one method and
even to a single ' theme. In his ex post
facto analysis of ' i The Raven ' ' he conceives
the highest tone of beauty to be sadness,
caused by the pathos of existence and our
inability to grasp the unknown. Of all
beauty that of a beautiful woman is the
supremest, her death is the saddest loss —
and therefore ''the most poetical topic in
the world. ' ' He would treat this musically
by application of the refrain, increasing the
sorrowful loveliness of his poem by con
trast of something homely, fantastic, or
quaint.

Poe's own range was quite within his
theory. His juvenile versions of what
afterward became poems were so very ' ' in
definite" as to express almost nothing;
they resembled those marvelous stanzas of
Dr. Chivers, that sound magnificently, —
I have heard Bayard Taylor and Swin
burne rehearse them with shouts of de
light — and that have no meaning at all.

56 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

A meio- poe could not remain a Cliivers, but sound

dist.

always was his forte. We rarely find his
highest imagination in his verse, or the
creation of poetic phrases such as came
to the lips of Keats without a summons.
He lacked the dramatic power of combina
tion, and produced no symphony in rhythm,
— was strictly a melodist, who achieved
wonders in a single strain. Neither Mrs.
Browning nor any other poet had "ap-
There- plied" the refrain in Poe's fashion, nor so

frain and

effectively. In "The Bells" its use is lim
ited almost to one word, the only English
word, perhaps, that could be repeated inces
santly as the burden of such a poem. In
"The Raven," "Lenore," and elsewhere,
he employed the repetend also, and with
still more novel results : —

"An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever

died so young,
A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died

so young."

' ' Our talk had been serious and sober,

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere,

Our memories were treacherous and sere."

EDGAR ALLAN POE 57

One thing profitably may be noted by
latter-day poets. Poe used none but ele
mentary English measures, relying upon his Use of

simple bal-

music and atmosphere for their effect. This iad forms.
is true of those which seem most intricate,
as in "The Bells" and "Ulalume."
"Lenore" and "For Annie" are the sim
plest of ballad forms. I have a fancy that
our Southern poet's ear caught the music
of "Annabel Lee" and "Eulalie," if not
their special quality, from the plaintive,
melodious negro songs utilized by those
early writers of "minstrelsy" who have
been denominated the only composers of a
genuine American school. This suggestion
may be scouted, but an expert might sus
pect the one to be a patrican refinement
upon the melody, feeling and humble charm
of the other.

Poe was not a single-poem poet, but the
poet of a single mood. His materials were
seemingly a small stock in trade, chiefly
of Angels and Demons, with an attendance
of Dreams, Echoes, Ghouls, Gnomes and

58 EDGAR ALLAN POH

E facts of Mimes, ready at hand. He selected or

sound.

coined, for use and re-use, a number of
what have been called ''beautiful words, "
—"albatross," "halcyon," ' ' scintillant, "
"Ligeia," "Weir," "Yaanek," "Auber,"
"D'Elormie," and the like. Everything
was subordinate to sound. But his poetry,
as it places us under the spell of the senses,
enables us to enter, through their reaction
upon the spirit, his indefinable mood; nor
should we forget that Coleridge owes his
specific rank as a poet, not to his philo
sophic verse, but to melodious fragments,
and greatly to the rhythm of ' * The Ancient
Mariner" and of " Christabel. " Poe's
melodies lure us to the point where we
seem to hear angelic lutes and citherns, or
elfin instruments that make music in "the
land east of the sun and west of the moon. ' '
The enchantment may not be that of
Israfel, nor of the harper who exorcised
the evil genius of Saul, but it is at least
that of some plumed being of the middle
air, of a charmer charming so sweetly that

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 59

his numbers are the burden of mystic
dreams. yx

as a r<>-

If Poe's standing depended chiefly upon

eminent

these few poems, notable as they are, his
name would be recalled less frequently.
His intellectual strength and rarest imag
ination are to be found in his Tales. To

r

them, and to literary criticism, his main
labors were devoted.

The limits of this chapter constrain me
to say less than I have in mind concerning
his prose writings. As with his poems, so
with the "Tales,"— their dates are of little
importance. His irregular life forced him
to alternate good work with bad, and some
of his best stories were written early. He
was an apostle of the art that refuses to
take its color from a given time or country,
and of the revolt against commonplace, and Revolt

, against the

his inventions partook of the romantic and common-
the wonderful. He added to a Greek per- **"*'
ception of form the Oriental passion for
decoration. All the materials of the wiz-

60 EDGAR ALLAN POE

ard's craft were at his command. He was
not a pupil of Beckford, Godwin, Maturin,
Hoffman, or Fouque; and yet if these
writers were to be grouped we should think
also of Poe, and give him no second place
among them. ' ' The young fellow is highly
imaginative, and a little given to the
terrific," said Kennedy, in his honest way.
Poe could not have written a novel, as we
term it, as well as the feeblest of Harper's
or Roberts 's yearlings. He vibrated between
Realism two points, the realistic and the mystic, and
made no attempt to combine people or sit
uations in ordinary life, though he knew
how to lead up to a dramatic tableau or
crisis. His studies of character were not
made from observation, but from acquaint
ance with himself; and this subjectivity,
or egoism, crippled his invention and made
his "Tales" little better than prose poems.
He could imagine a series of adventures —
the experience of a single narrator — like
"Arthur Gordon Pym," and might have
been, not Le Sage nor De Foe, but an

cism.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 61

eminent raconteur in his own field. His
strength, is unquestionable in those clever
pieces of ratiocination, "The Murders in
the Eue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie
Roget," "The Purloined Letter"; in some
of a more fantastic type, "The Gold Bug"
and "Hans Pfaall"; and especially in fsycko-

logic CMC/
those with elements of terror and morbid ysis.

psychology added, such as "The Descent
into the Maelstrom," "The Black Cat,j'\
"The Tell-tale Heart," and the mesmeric
sketches. When composing these he de
lighted in the exercise of his dexterous
intellect, like a workman testing his skill.
No poet is of a low grade who possesses,
besides an ear for rhythm, the resources
of a brain so fine and active. Technical
gifts being equal, the more intellectual of
two poets is the greater. "Best bard, be
cause the wisest."

His artistic contempt for metaphysics is contempt

for meta-

seen even in those tales which appear most physics.
transcendental. They are charged with a
feeling that in the realms of psychology we

62 EDGAR ALLAN POH

are dealing with something ethereal, which
is none the less substance if we might but
capture it. They are his resolute attempts
to find a clew to the invisible world. Were
he living now, how much he would make of
our discoveries in light and sound, of the
correlation of forces ! He strove by a kind
of divination to put his hand upon the links
of mind and matter, and reach the hiding-
places of the soul. It galled him that any
thing should lie outside the domain of
human intelligence. His imperious intel
lect rebelled against the bounds that shut
us in, and found passionate expression in
works of which ' ' Ligeia, " ' ' The Fall of the

Master
pieces. House of Usher," and "William Wilson"

are the best types. The tales in which
lyrics are introduced are full of complex
beauty, the choicest products of his genius.
They are the offspring of yearnings that
lifted him so far above himself as to make
us forget his failings and think of him
only as a creative artist, a man of noble
gifts.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 63

In these short, purely ideal efforts — fin
ished as an artist finishes a portrait, or a
poet his poem — Poe had few equals in
recent times. That he lacked sustained
power of invention is proved, not by his
failure to complete an extended work, but
by his under-estimation of its value. Such
a man measures everything by his personal
ability, and finds plausible grounds for
the resulting standard. Hawthorne had
the growing power and the staying power
that gave us "The Scarlet Letter" and
"The House of the Seven Gables." Poe foe and

Haw-

and Hawthorne were the last of the ro- tkome.
mancers. Each was a master in his way,
and that of Poe was the more obvious and
material. He was expert in much that
concerns the structure of works, and the
modeling touches of the poet left beauty-
marks upon his prose. Yet in spiritual
meaning his tales were less poetic than
those of Hawthorne. He relied upon his
I externals, making the utmost of their gor-
l geousness of color, their splendor and

64 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

gloom of light and shade. Hawthorne
found the secret meaning of common
things, and knew how to capture, from the
plainest aspects of life, an essence of
evasive beauty which the senses of Poe
often were unable to perceive. It was
Hawthorne who heard the melodies too fine
for mortal ear. Hawthorne was wholly
masculine, with the great tenderness and
gentleness which belong to virile souls. Poe
! had, with the delicacy, the sophistry and
! weakness of a nature more or less effemi-

'• nate. He opposed to Hawthorne the fire,

_'
the richness, the instability of the tre-piesp

as against the abiding strength and passion
of the North. His own conceptions aston
ished him, and he often presents himself
"with hair on end, at his own wonders."
Of these two artists and seers, the New
Englander had the prof ounder insight ; the
Southerner's magic was that of the nec
romancer who resorts to spells and devices,
and, when some apparition by chance re-

EDGAR ALLAN POE 65

spends to his incantations, is bewildered by
the phantom himself has raised.

Poe failed to see that the Puritanism by
which Hawthorne's strength was tempered
was also the source from which it sprang;"
and in his general criticism did not pay
full tribute to a genius he must have felt.
In some of his sketches, such as "The Man
of the Crowd," he used Hawthorne's meth
od, and with inferior results. His reviews
of other authors and his occasional literary
notes have been so carefully preserved as
to show his nature by a mental and moral

photograph. His Marginalia, scrappy and "Margi
nalia."

written for effect, are the notes of a think
ing man of letters. The criticisms raised
a hubbub in their day, and made Poe the
bogy of his generation — the unruly censor
whom weaklings not only had cause to
fear, but often regarded with a sense of
cruel injustice. I acknowledge their fre
quent dishonesty, vulgarity, prejudice, but
do not, therefore, hold them to be worth
less. Even a scourge, a pestilence, has its

66 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

uses ; before it the puny and frail go down,
the fittest survive. And so it was in Poe's
foray. Better that a time of unproductive
ness should follow such a thinning out
than that false and feeble things should
" The LH- continue. I suspect that The Literati made

erati"

1846. room for a new movement, sure though

long delayed, in American authorship. Mr.
Higginson, however, is entirely right when
he intimates that Margaret Fuller, by her
independent reviews in "The Tribune,"
sustained her full and early part in the
chase against "such small deer." The
shafts of Diana were more surely sped, and
much less vindictively, than the spear of
her brother-huntsman. Poe's sketches are
a prose Dunciad, waspish and unfair, yet
not without touches of magnanimity. He
had small respect for the feeling that it
is well for a critic to discover beauties,
since any one can point out faults. When,
as in the cases of Tennyson, Mrs. Brown
ing, Taylor, and others, he pronounced
favorably upon the talents of a claimant,

EDGAR ALLAN POH 67

and was uninfluenced by personal motives,
his judgments not seldom have been justi
fied by the after-career. Besides, what a
cartoon he drew of the writers of his time,
— the corrective of Griswold's optimistic
delineations ! In the description of a man 's
personal appearance he had the art of
placing the subject before us with a single
touch. His tender mercies were cruel; he
never forgot to prod the one sore spot of
the author he most approved, — was espe
cially intolerant of his own faults in others,
and naturally detected these at once. When
meting out punishment to a pretentious
writer, he reveled in his task, and often
made short work, as if the pleasure was
too great to be endurable. The keenness
of his satire, just or unjust, is mitigated satire.
by its obvious ferocity: one instinctively
takes part with the victim. Nothing in
journalistic criticism, even at that time,
was more scathing and ludicrous than his
conceit of a popular bookwright in the act
of confabulation with the Universe. But

68

EDGAR ALLAN POH

Broad-
axe criti
cism.

Poe's

equipment
and
genius.

he marred the work by coarseness, telling
one man that he was by no means a fool,
although he did write "De Vere," and
heading a paper on the gentlest and most
forbearing of poets — "Mr. Longfellow and
other Plagiarists. ' ' In short, he constantly
dulled the edge and temper of his rapier,
and resorted to the broad-axe, using the
latter even in his deprecation of its use
by Kit North. Perhaps it was needed in
those salad days by offenders who could
be put down in no other wise; but I hold
it a sign of progress that criticism by force
of arms would now be less effective.

VI

Some analysis of Poe's general equip
ment will not be out of place. Only in the
most perfect tales can his English style
^be called excellent, however significant his
thought. His mannerisms — constant em
ployment of the dash for suggestiveness,
and a habit of italicizing to make a point
or strengthen an illusion — are wearisome,
and betray a lack of confidence in his skill

EDGAR ALLAN POH 69

to use plain methods. While asserting the
power of words to convey absolutely any
idea of the human mind, he relied on sound,
quaintness, surprise, and other artificial
aids. His prose is inferior to Hawthorne 's ;
but sometimes he excels Hawthorne in qual
ities of form and proportion which are
specially at the service of authors who are
also poets. The abrupt beginnings of his
stories often are artistic: —

* ' We had now reached the summit of the loftiest
crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too
much exhausted to speak." ("Descent into the
Maelstrom. ")

"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had
borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon
insult, I vowed revenge." ("The Cask of Amon
tillado. ' ')

His endings were equally good, when he
had a clear knowledge of his own purpose,
and some of his conceptions terminate at
a dramatic crisis. The tone, also, of his
masterpieces is well sustained throughout. „

Ihe I

In ''The Fall of the House of Usher," Faiiofthe

House of

the approach to the fated spot, the air, the usher."

70 EDGAR ALLAN POH

landscape, the tarn, the mansion itself, are
a perfect study, equal to the ride of Childe
Roland, — and here Poe excels Browning:
we not only come with him to the dark
tower, but we enter and partake its mys-
(\ tery, and alone know the secret of its*
accursed fate. The poet's analytic faculty
has been compared to that of Balzac, but
a parallel goes no farther than the material
side. In condensation he surpassed either
Balzac or Hawthorne.

His imagination was not of the highest

order, for he never dared to trust to it
implicitly; certainly not in his poetry,
since he could do nothing with a measure
like blank verse, which is barren in the
hands of a mere songster, but the glory
of English metrical forms when employed
by one commanding the strength of diction,
the beauty and grandeur of thought, and
all the resources of a strongly imaginative
poet. Neither in verse nor in prose did he
cut loose from his minor devices, and for
results of sublimity and awe he always

EDGAR ALLAN POE 71

depends upon that which is grotesque or

/ put of nature. Beauty of the fantastic or rhefan-

' grotesque is not the highest beauty. Art,

like nature, must be fantastic, not in her

frequent, but in her exceptional moods.

The rarest ideal dwells in a realm beyond

that which fascinates us by its strangeness

* V

or terror, and the votaries of the latter
have masters above them as high as Raphael
is above Dore.

In genuine humor Poe seemed utterly Deficient
wanting. He also had little of the mother- "
wit that comes in flashes and at once; but
his powers of irony and satire were so
great as to make his frequent lapses into
invective the more humiliating. The com
mand of humor has distinguished men
whose genius was both high and broad. If
inessential to exalted poetical work, its ab
sence is hurtful to the critical and polemic
essay. Poe knew this as well as any one,
but a measureless self-esteem would not ac
knowledge the flaw in his armor. Hence
efforts which involved the delusion that

72 EDGAR ALLAN POH

Quality of humor may come by works and not by

the great

humorists, inborn gift. Humor is congenital and rare,
the fruit of natural mellowness, of sensi-
tiveness to the light and humane phases
of life. It is, moreover, set in action by
an unselfish heart. Such is the mirth of
Thackeray, of Cervantes and Moliere, and
of the one master of English song. Poe's
consciousness of his defect, and his refusal
to believe it incurable, are manifest in
trashy sketches for which he had a market,
and which are humorous only to one who
sees the ludicrous side of their failure. He
analyzed mirth as the product of incon
gruity, and went to work upon a theory
to produce it. The result is seen not only
in the extravaganzas to which I refer, —
and it is a pity that these should have been
hunted up so laboriously, — but in the use
of what he thought was humor to barb his
criticisms, and as a contrast to the exciting
passages of his analytical tales. One of
his sketches, "The Due de I'Omelette,"
after the lighter French manner, has grace

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 73

and jaunty persiflage, but most of his
whimsical il pot-boilers " are deplorably
absurd. There is something akin to hu
mor in the sub-handling of his favorite
themes, — such as the awe and mystery of
death, the terrors of pestilence, insanity,
or remorse. The grotesque and nether side The gro-
of these matters presents itself to him, and
then his irony, with its repulsive fancies,
is as near humor as he ever approaches.
That is to say, it is grave-yard humor, the
kind which sends a chill down our backs,
and implies a contempt for our bodies and
souls, for the perils, helplessness, and mean
ness of the stricken human race.

Poe is sometimes called a man of extra- character
ordinary learning. Upon a first acquaint- SChoiar-
ance, one might receive the impression that shit>'
his scholarship was not only varied, but
thorough. A study of his works has satis
fied me that he possessed literary resources
and knew how to make the most of them.
In this he resembled Bulwer, and, with far
less abundant materials than the latter re-

74 EDGAR ALLAN POH

quired, employed them as speciously. He
Affecta- \ easily threw a glamour of erudition about
£•»«*£. his work, by the use of phrases from old
| authors he had read, or among whose
I treatises he had foraged with special de
sign. It was his knack to cull sentences
which, taken by themselves, produce a
weird or impressive effect, and to reframe
them skilfully. This plan was clever, and
resulted in something that could best be
muttered " darkly, at dead of night"; but
it partook of trickery, even in its art. He
had little exact scholarship, nor needed it,
dealing, as he did, not with the processes
of learning, but with results that could sub
serve the play of his imagination. Shake
speare's anachronisms and illusions were
made as he required them, and with a fine
disdain. Poe resorted to them of malice
aforethought, and under pretence of cor
rectness. Still, the work of a romancer
and poet is not that of a book- worm. What
reference he needs is B> good reference-knowledge, and

knowledge. irregular SChool-boy

EDGAR ALLAN POE 75

training was not likely to give him the
scholastic habit, nor would his impatient
manhood otherwise have confirmed it. I
am sure that we may consider that portion
of his youth to have been of most worth
which was devoted, as in the case of many
a born writer, to the unconscious education
obtained from the reading, for the mere
love of it, of all books to which he had
access. This training served him well. It
enabled him to give his romance an al
chemic air, by citation from writers like
Chapman, Thomas, More, Bishop King, etc.,
and from Latin and French authors in pro
fusion. His French tendencies were nat
ural, and he learned enough of the language
to read much of its current literature and
get hold of modes unknown to many of his
fellow-writers. I have said that his stock
in trade was narrow, but for the adroit
display of it examine any of his tales and
sketches, — for example, "Berenice," or
"The Assignation."

76 EDGAR ALLAN POE

His ma- in knowledge of what may be called the

terials.

properties of his romance, he was more hon
estly grounded. He had the good fortune
to utilize the Southern life and scenery
which he knew in youth. It chanced, also,
that during some years of his boyhood —
that formative period whose impressions
are indelible — he lived in a characteristic
part of England. He had seen with his
own eyes castles, abbeys, the hangings and
tapestries and other by-gone trappings of
ancient rooms, and remembered effects of
decoration and color which always came to
his aid. These he used as if he were born
to them ; never, certainly, with the surprise
at their richness which vulgarizes Disraeli 's
"Lothair." In some way, known to genius,
he also caught the romance of France, of
Italy, of the Orient, and one tale or another
is transfused with their atmosphere; while
the central figure, however disguised, is
always the image of the romancer himself.
His equipment, on the whole, was not a
pedant's, much less that of a searcher after

EDGAR ALLAN POH 77

truth; it was that of a poet and a literary
workman. Yet he had the hunger which
animates the imaginative student, and, had
he been led to devote himself to science,
would have contributed to the sum of
knowledge. In writing Eureka he was un- "Eureka:
questionably sincere, and forgot himself Poem,"
more nearly than in any other act of his 18
professional life. But here his inexact
learning betrayed him. What was begun
in conviction — a swift generalization from
scientific theories of the universe — grew
to be so far beyond the data at his com
mand, or so inconsistent with them, that he
finally saw he had written little else than
a prose poem, and desired that it should
be so regarded. Of all sciences, astronomy
appeals most to the imagination. "What is
rational in " Eureka " mostly is a re-state
ment of accepted theories: otherwise the
treatise is vague and nebulous, — a light
dimmed by its own vapor. The work is
curiously saturated with our modern Pan
theism; and although in many portions it

78

A fay-
man's im
aginative
venture.
Cf. "Vic
torian
Poets " .-
PP. 19, 20.

Poetic in
duction.

HDGAR ALLAN FOB

shows the author's weariness, yet it was a
notable production for a layman venturing
within the precincts of the savant. The
poetic instinct hits upon truths which the
science of the future confirms ; but as often,
perhaps, it glorifies some error sprung from
a too ardent generalization. Poe's inexact
ness was shown in frequent slips, — some
times made unconsciously, sometimes in
reliance upon the dullness of his rivals to
save him from detection. He was on the
alert for other people's errors; for his own
facts, were he now alive, he could not call
so lightly upon his imagination. Even our
younger authors, here and abroad, now
are so well equipped that their learning
seems to handicap their winged steeds. Poe
had, above all, the gift of poetic Induction.
He would have divined the nature of an
unknown world from a specimen of its
flora, a fragment of its art. He felt him
self something more than a bookman. He
was a creator of the beautiful, and hence
the conscious struggle of his spirit for the

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 79

sustenance it craved. Even when he was
most in error, he labored as an artist, and
it is idle criticism that judges him upon
any other ground.

Accept him, then, whether as poet or
romancer, as a pioneer of the art feeling in /
American literature. So far as he was
devoted to art for art's sake, it was for
her sake as the exponent of beauty. No
man ever lived in whom the passion for
loveliness more plainly governed the emo
tions and convictions. His service of the
beautiful was idolatry, and he would have
kneeled with Heine at the feet of Our Lady
of Milo, and believed that she yearned to
help him. This consecration to absolute
beauty made him abhor the mixture of sen-
timentalism, metaphysics, and morals, in
its presentation. It was a foregone con
clusion that neither Longfellow, Emerson,
Lowell, nor Hawthorne should wholly sat
isfy him. The question of "moral" ten-/ X
dency concerned him not in the least. He '
did not feel with Keats that "Beauty is

80 EDGAR ALLAN POH

truth, truth beauty, ' ' and that a divine per
fection may be reached by either road. This
deficiency narrowed his range both as a
poet and as a critic. His sense of justice
was a sense of the fitness of things, and —
strange to say — when he put it aside he for
got that he was doing an unseemly thing.
Hist>rotest\ Otherwise, he represents, or was one of the

against di~ . .

nrst to lead, a rebellion against formalism,

commonplace, the spirit of the bourgeois.
In this movement Whitman is his counter-
type at the pole opposite from that of art;
and hence they justly are picked out from
the rest of us and associated in foreign
minds. Taste was Poe's supreme faculty.
Beauty, to him, was a definite and logical
Taste. reality, and he would have scouted Veron 's
claim that it has no fixed objective laws,
and exists only in the nature of the ob
server. Although the brakes of art were
on his imagination, his taste was not wholly
pure; he vacillated between the classic
forms and those allied with color, splendor,
Oriental decoration; between his love for

\

EDGAR ALLAN POH 81

the antique and his impressions of the mys
tical and grotesque. But he was almost
without confraternity. An artist in an un- isolation.
artistic period, he had to grope his way,
to contend with stupidity and coarseness.
Again, his imagination, gloating upon the
possibilities of taste, violated its simplicity.
Poe longed for the lamp of Aladdin, for
the riches of the Gnomes. Had unbounded
wealth been his, he would have outvied
Beckford, Landor, Dumas, in barbaric ex
travagance of architecture. His efforts to
apply the laws of the beautiful to imagin
ary decoration, architecture, landscape, are Decorative
very fascinating as seen in "The Philos
ophy of Furniture/' "Landscape Garden
ing," and " Landor 's Cottage." "The
Domain of Arnheim" is a marvelous dream
of an earthly paradise, and the close is a
piece of word-painting as effective as the
language contains. Regarding this sen^i-
tive artist, this original poet, it seems in
deed a tragedy that a man so ideal in either A tragedy.
realm, so unfit for contact with ugliness,

82 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

dulness, brutality, should have come to eat
husks with the swine, to be misused by
their human counterparts, and to die the
\ death of a drunkard, in the refuge which
' society offers to the most forlorn and hope
less of its castaways.

VII

Seeking our illustrations of the poetic
A singular life, we find no career of more touching

and Pa-

and peculiar interest than that of Poe. It
is said that disaster followed him even
after death, in the vicious memoir which
Griswold prefixed to his collected works;
and doubtless the poet should have had
for his biographer a man of kind and
healthy discernment, like Kennedy, his
townsman and generous friend. Yet Poe
showed tact in choosing Griswold, and
builded better than he knew. He could
select no more indefatigable bookwright to
bring together his scattered writings, and
he counted upon Death's paying all debts.
In this Poe was mistaken. For once Gris
wold wrote as he thought and felt, and his

EDGAR ALLAN POH 83

memoir, however spiteful and unchivalrous,
was more sincere than many of the syco
phantic sketches in the bulky volumes of
his ' ' Poets and Poetry. ' ' Malice made him
eloquent, and an off-hand obituary notice
of the poet was the most nervous piece of
work that ever came from his pen. It was
heartless, and, in some respects, inaccurate.
It brought so much wrath upon him that he
became vindictive, and followed it up with
a memoir, which, as an exhibition of the
ignoble nature of its author, scarcely has
a parallel. Did this in the end affect Poe's
fame injuriously ? Far otherwise ; it moved Effect
a host of writers, beginning with Willis and
Graham, to recall his habit of life, and re
veal the good side of it. Some have gone
as far in eulogy as Griswold went toward
the opposite extreme. It seemed a cruel
irony of fate that Poe's own biographer
should plant thorns upon his grave, but he
also planted laurels. He paid an unstinted
tribute to the poet's genius, and this was
the only concession which Poe himself

84 EDGAR ALLAN FOB

would care to demand. With sterner
irony, Time brings in his revenges! In a
familiar edition of the poet's works, for
which Griswold laid the groundwork, the
memoir by Ingram is devoted largely to
correcting the errors of the Doctor's long-
since excluded sketch, and to exposing
every act of malice against Poe which
Griswold committed, either before or after
his foeman's death.

After years of censure and defence, and

tempera- in the light of his own writings, the poet's
character is not " beyond all conjecture."
Here was a man of letters who fulfilled the
traditions of a past century in this western
world and modern time ; one over-possessed
and hampered by the very temperament
that made him a poet — and this, too, when
he thought himself deliberate and calcu
lating. His head was superbly developed,
his brain-power too great for its resources
of supply and control. The testimony of
some who knew his home-life is that he
was tender and lovable. Graham and

EDGAR ALLAN POE 85

Willis aver that he was patient and regular
in work, and scrupulous to return a just
amount of labor for value received. But
many who knew and befriended him have
spoken, more in sorrow than in anger, of
his treachery and thanklessness, of his in
justice to himself, and of the degrading
excesses which plunged him into depths
from which it grew more and more diffi
cult to lift him.

Nevertheless, Poe was not a man of im- Love of
moral habits. I assert that scholars, „
writers, and artists, in spite of a tradition
to the contrary, are less given, as a class, to
forbidden pleasures than business-men and
idle men of the world. Study and a love
of the ideal protect them against the sensu
ality by which too many dull the zest of
their appetites. Poe was no exception to
the rule. He was not a libertine. Woman
was to him the impersonation of celestial
beauty, her influence soothed and elevated
him, and in her presence he was gentle,
winning, and subdued. There is not an

86 EDGAR ALLAN POH

chastity of 'i unchaste suggestion in the whole course of

Poe's writ
ings, his writings, — a remarkable fact, in view of

his acquaintance with the various schools of
French literature. His works are almost
too spiritual. Not of the earth, earthy,
their personages meet with the rapture and
co-absorption of disembodied souls. His
verse and prose express devotion to Beauty
in her most ethereal guise, and he justly
might cry out with Shelley: —

"I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine; have I not kept the vow?"

Not a Nor was he undevotional. His sense of the
t- sublime and mystical filled him with
nk* thoughts of other worlds and existences
than ours; if there is pride, there is rever
ence, in his bold imaginings. He felt a
spark of the divine fire within him, and the
pride of his intellectual disdain was,
like the Titan's, a not inglorious sin.
Finally, Poe was not an habitual drunk
ard. He had woful fits of drunken
ness, varying in frequency, and some
times of degradation; for a single glass

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 87

made him the easy prey of any coarse and
pitiless hands into which he might fall.
He was a man inebriate when sober, his
brain surging with emotion, and a stimu
lant that only served to steady common
men bewildered him. As with women, the
least contamination was to him debasement.
His mature years were a battle with in- mshered-
^herited tgint, and there were long periods
in which he was the victor. This taint had
been increased by drugging in infancy, and
by the convivial usages of his guardian's
household. Bearing in mind, also, the lack
of self-control inherent in Celtic and South
ern natures, I think he made a plucky
fight. The duty of self-support was not
one to which he had been trained, and was
more than he could bear. Imagine Shelley,
who made his paper boats of bank-notes,
Byron and Landor, who had their old es
tates, forced to write by the column for

Effects of

their weekly board. " Poverty has this ^^
disease : through want it teaches a man torn*

Poets":

evil." More, it limits the range of his A si.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB

possibilities. Doudan has said, with truth
and feeling, that he who is without security
for the morrow can neither meditate upon
nor accomplish a lasting work. The deli
cate fancies of certain writers are not al
ways at quick command, and the public is
loath to wait and pay for quality. Poe,
more than once, fell into disgrace by not
being able to meet his literary engagements
on time. His most absurd and outrageous
articles, such as the one put forth after his
Boston lecture, were the bluster of a man
who strove to hide a sense of humiliation
and failure. Doubtless, he secretly invoked
the gods in his own behalf. He knew, like
Chenier going to his death, that it was a
pity — he was worth saving. Generous
efforts, in truth, were made to save him,
by strong and tender friends, but these
were quite in vain. He carried a death-
warrant within him. Well might he feel
that a spell was on him, and in one tale
and another try to make the world — which
he affected to despise — comprehend its

EDGAR ALLAN POB 89

fatality, and bespeak the sympathetic ver
dict of the future upon his defeat and
doom.

It is just that well-balanced persons

should rebuke the failings of genius. But '

let such an one imagine himself with a
painfully sensitive organization, — "all
touch, all eye, all ear"; with appetites al
most resistless; with a frame in which
health and success breed a dangerous rap
ture, disease and sorrow a fatal despair.
Surmount all this with a powerful intelli
gence that does not so much rule the struc
ture as it menaces it, and threatens to shake
it asunder. Let him conceive himself as
adrift, from the first, among adverse sur
roundings, now combating his environ
ment, now struggling to adjust himself to
it. He, too, might find his judgment a
broken reed; his passions might get the
upper hand; his perplexities bring him to
shamelessness and ruin. It was thus the
poet's curse came upon him, and the wings
of his Psyche were sorrowfully trailei in

90

The price
less rarity
of gen ius.

Lack of
self -poise.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB

the dust. I have said to friends as they
sneered at the ill-managed life of one whose
special genius perhaps could not exist but
in union with certain infirmities, that in
stead of recounting these, and deriding
them, they should hedge him round with
their protection. We can find more than
one man of sense among a thousand, but
how rarely a poet with such a gift ! When
he has gone his music will linger, and be
precious to those who never have heard,
like ourselves, the sweet bells jangled.

Making every allowance, Poe was terri
bly blamable. We all are misunderstood,
and all condemned to toil. The sprites have
their task- work, and cannot always be danc
ing in the moonlight. At times, we are
told, they have to consort with what is
ugly, and even take on its guise. Unhap
pily, Poe was the reverse of one who "for
tune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with
equal thanks/' He stood good fortune
more poorly than bad; any emotion would
upset him, and his worst falls were after

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 91

successes, or with success just in sight.
His devotion to beauty was eagerly selfish.
He had a heart, and in youth was loyal to
those he loved. In this respect he differed
\ from the hero of "A Strange Story," born
without affection or soul. But his dream
was that of "The Palace of Art" — a lord
ly pleasure-house, where taste and love
should have their fill, regardless of the
outer world. It has been well said, that if
not immoral, he was unmoral. With him Not im-
an end justified the means, and he had no
conception of the law and limitations of
liberty, no practical sense of right or wrong.
At the most, he ignored such matters as
things irrelevant. Now it is not essential
that one should have a creed ; he may rele
gate theologies to the regions of the un
knowable; but he must be just in order to
fear not, and humane that he may be loved ;
he must be faithful to some moral standard
of his own, otherwise his house, however
beautiful and lordly, is founded in the
sand.

EDGAR ALLAN FOB
is genius The question always will recur, whether,

the product

of neurotic if Poe had been able to govern his life

disorder?

aright, he would not also have been conven
tional and tame, and so much the less a
poet. Were it not for his excesses and
neurotic crises, should we have had the
peculiar quality of his art and the works it
has left us ? I cannot here discuss the the
ory that his genius was a frenzy, and that
poetry is the product of abnormal nerve-
vibrations. The claim, after all, is a scien
tific statement of the belief that great wits
are sure to madness near allied. An exam
ination of it involves the whole ground of
fate, free will, and moral responsibility. I
think that Poe was bounden for his acts.
He never failed to resent infringements up
on his own manor; and, however poor his
self-control, it was not often with that the
cord of self passed trembling out of sight.
Possibly his most exquisite, as they were his
most poetic, moments, were at those times
when he seemed very wretched, and avowed
himself oppressed by a sense of doom. He

EDGAR ALLAN POE 93

loved his share of pain, and was an instance
of the fact that man is the one being that
takes keen delight in the tragedy of its own
existence, and for whom

"Joy is deepest when it springs from woe."

Wandering among the graves of those he
had cherished, invoking the spectral mid
night skies, believing himself the Orestes
of his race — in all this he was fulfilling
his nature, deriving the supremest sensa
tions, feeding on the plants of night from
which such as he obtain their sustenance
or go famished. They who do not per
ceive this never will comprehend the mys
teries of art and song, of the heart from
whose recesses these must be evoked. They
err who commiserate Poe for such experi
ences. My own pity for him is of another secret of
kind; it is that which we ever must feel
for one in whom the rarest possibilities
were blighted by an inherent lack of will.
In his sensitiveness to impressions like the
foregoing, he had at once the mood and
material for far greater results than he

94 EDGAR ALLAN POE

achieved. A violin cracks none the sooner
for being played in a minor key. His in
strument broke for want of a firm and even
hand to use it — a virile, devoted master
to prolong the strain.

Poe's demand for his present wish was
always strong, yet it was the caprice of a
child, and not the determination that stays
and conquers. He was no more of an
egoist than was Goethe ; but self-absorption
is the edged tool that maims a wavering
NO real hand. His will, in the primary sense, was
weak from the beginning. It became more
and more reduced by those habits which,
of all the defences of a noble mind, attack
this stronghold first. It was not able to
preserve for him the sanity of true genius,
and his product, therefore, was so much
the less complete.

' ' O well for him whose will is strong !
He suffers, but he will not suffer long. ' '

Poe suffered, in bitter truth, and the end
came not through triumph, but in death.
His fame is not what it might have been,

EDGAR ALLAN FOB 95

we say; yet it is greater than he — dying
with a sense of incompleteness — probably
expected it to be, and more than he could
have asked. In spite, then, of the most
reckless career, the work a man really ac- work'
complishes — both for what it is in itself
and for what it reveals of the author's gift
— in the end will be valued exactly at its
worth. Does the poet, the artist, demand
some promise that it also may be made to
tell during our working life, and even that
life be lengthened till the world shall learn
to honor it? Let him recall the grave, ex
alted words which Poe took at hazard for
his "Ligeia," and stayed not to dwell upon
their spiritual meaning: "Man doth not
yield himself to the angels, nor unto death
utterly, save only through the weakness of
his own feeble will."

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